Category: Personal
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Was This Saul Bellow’s First Published Piece?
In my early age I wanted to be a street car conductor. Later I wanted to be a mountaineer. At the present I have better and higher ambitions, like being a professional man.
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A Jewish-Russian Frontier Man
This is the story of Aharon Ya’akov Dukhan, a Jewish-Russian frontier man whose life spanned the second half of the nineteenth century. In Pale in Comparison, a paper that I am currently developing, I argue that even in as late a period as the one in which Aharon Ya’akov was active, Jews were, in a…
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“Stop Your Cruel Oppression of the Jews”: Reading a Cartoon
When I present my work on the Jewish migration, I like using this cartoon in order to illustrate the traditional thesis that the Jewish migration from the Pale of Settlement was caused by the pogroms. It shows a Jewish town, on that right, that was hit by a pogrom, and a stream of Jewish refugees…
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Dudu Geva: A Childhood Hero and a Prophet
Great art remains relevant for years. Real masterpieces can gain relevance over time. But these two pieces by my childhood comic books writer idol, Dudu Geva z”l, that I clipped from Kol-Ha’Ir (Jerusalem’s local newspaper) as a child some 24 years ago, are nothing short of divine inspiration and prophecy.
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A wild Encounter with a Zoroastrian Taxi Driver
Every time I do something good, something bad happens. I can’t be happy. I’m afraid to be happy because I know that something bad will happen. I’m not superstitious, but lately these things happen. I took in some guy, he was drunk, suddenly he started speaking crazy shit, then he banged the window. It broke,…
Yannay Spitzer 